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OPERATIONS Focus on Promoting Disruptive Technology - A Boon for Supply Chain and Logistics Industry Amit Jha- MMS 2019-21, Prin L. N. Welingkar Institute of Management Development and Research, Mumbai Supply chains of today have emerged as a more holistic concept that includes product development, marketing, operations, distribution, finance, and consumer service & thus touching upon the various tangents of business and therefore requires a broader perspective with broadened horizons. It has become the backbone of the firm, and now the two firms compete not only on the level of offerings and strategy but even on the supply chain front. Disruptive technologies like the Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Big data analytics, Visual Reality/Augmented Reality, Cloud computing have emerged to be game-changing technologies and disrupted the status quo left to right and center. These technical buzzwords, which frequently appear in media reports, parliamentary debates & in day to day discussions, have now revolutionized various business processes like never before representing the future aspirations of a new era.
Supply chains of today have transformed themselves from simple linear chains to a complex network of web aiming at maximizing the overall value created due to marketing and logistics activity as it correlated to the profitability of the whole system. So, the supply chain must support the competitive strategy of the respective firm. Supply chain decision making works on three levels -strategic, tactical, and execution in concordance to the competitive strategy of the firm. Today it not only includes the movement of goods but also the movement of information and funds in both the direction. Today's supply networks face challenges like lack of synchronization between planning and execution due to the lack of real-time data available, which leads to reduced flexibility in
